Abstract

We report what we believe is the first demonstration of an effective and scalable saturable absorber for KrF lasers. Our measurements show that a 10‐cm path length of ozone (O3) at a partial pressure ∼1 Torr will attenuate a flux of less than 50 mJ/cm2 by a factor ∼50 (∼2% transmission), while allowing transmission of ∼90% for energy densities above 1 J/cm2.